I Saw A Man Once
from the pages of Morbid magazine
I saw a man once; he was clawing his way down the road, trailing blood and crap from behind his legless body; and you could hear his innards sliding around loose on the gravel; and he looked at me on my cozy porch in the shade, and i looked at him dragging himself pitifully through the dirt and rocks in the hot sun. He didn't ask for any help, and i didn't offer; he just looked for a moment, and continued to drag his severed carcass along, chafing himself and wearing the skin off of his fingers. But after a while, I got curious; and I set off to looking for him, because I was going to ask him how he got his legs torn off, and maybe poke him once... or twice. so there I was, following a trail of blood and people-droppings, and all of a sudden the trail stopped. There wasn't anyone around, with half their body gone, clawing their way down the road on bloody fingers. It was just me and the trail. I must have fallen asleep, because I looked up from where I was laying, with rocks pushing into me;
And I looked into the face of the man from the porch, and I was afraid. He asked me in his country accent how I had lost the other half of my body, and he said that it looked pretty bad and that I must have trailed feces and my own blood for a mile down his road. He bent down and smiled. He poked me with his index finger once... and then again. Twice. He stood; and as he nudged me with the toe of his shoe, he said with great satisfaction, "Yep." He then turned and walked away, back toward his home and his swing on the porch in the shade, whistling happily. I felt no resentment towards him as I dug into the dirt with my fingers and pulled my torso along through the dirt, with my intestines and other vital organs slithering audibly out of me and onto the road. I felt no resentment towards him as I strained and struggled, the meat slowly peeling back from the bones in my fingers and with my flesh being rubbed away by the yellow country dirt; this dirt did not have a pleasing taste; yet I had eaten a great deal of it. I felt no resentment towards the old man from the porch; for i had experienced this thing before, many times.
I was used to it by now.